Communism

The group continued to move leftwards and briefly adopted the name
Communist
Party , although in fact it was not the recognized section. The
CP(BSTI) was opposed to parliamentarism, in contrast to the views of
the newly founded Communist Party of Great
Britain (CPGB). The CP(BSTI) soon dissolved itself into the
larger, official Communist Party. This unity was to be short-lived
and when the leadership of the CPGB proposed that Pankhurst hand
over the Workers Dreadnought to the party she revolted. As
a result she was expelled from the CPGB and moved to found the
short-lived Communist
Workers Party.

Partner and son

Pankhurst objected to entering into a marriage contract and taking
a husband's name. At about the end of the First World War, she
began living with Silvo Corio, who was
an Italian anarchist, and moved to Woodford Green for over 30 years.A blue plaque and Pankhurst Green opposite
Woodford tube
station commemorate her link to the area. In 1927
she gave birth to a son, Richard. As she refused to
marry the child's father, her own mother, Emmeline Pankhurst, broke
with her and did not speak to her again.

From 1936,
MI5 kept a watch
on Pankhurst's correspondence. In 1940, she wrote to
Viscount Swinton as the chairman of
a committee investigating Fifth
Columnists, sending him a list of active Fascists still at
large and of anti-Fascists who had been interned. A copy of this letter on MI5's file
carries a note in Swinton's hand reading "I should think a most
doubtful source of information."

After the post-war liberation of Ethiopia, she became a strong
supporter of union between Ethiopia and the former Italian Somaliland, and MI5's file
continued to follow her activities. In 1948, MI5 considered
strategies for "muzzling the tiresome Miss Sylvia Pankhurst".

Pankhurst became a friend and adviser to the Ethiopian Emperor
Haile Selassie and followed a consistently anti-British stance.
She moved
to Addis
Ababa at Haile Selassie's invitation in 1956, with her
son, Richard, (who continues to live there), and founded a monthly
journal, Ethiopia Observer, which reported on many aspects
of Ethiopian life and development.

She died in 1960, and was given a full state funeral at which Haile Selassie named
her 'an honorary Ethiopian'. She is the only foreigner buried in front of
Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa, in the area reserved for patriots
of the Italian war.

Writings (selection)

The Home Front (1932; reissued 1987 by The Cresset
Library) ISBN 0-09-172911-4

Soviet Russia as I saw it (London, 1921)

The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons
and Ideals (reissued 1984 by Chatto & Windus)

Communism or Reforms two articles by Sylvia
Pankhurst and Anton Pannekoek, first published in the Workers
Dreadnought in 1922. First published as a pamphlet in 1974 by
Workers Voice, a Communist group based in Liverpool.